It may come as no surprise to many of you that we are making a statement now, in response to Shueisha’s recent appeal for RAW distribution of Manga to cease. There are many ways of trying to address this; all of which fall short to the simplicity of our decision.

MangaHelpers’ mission statement, as found on the bottom right of our main page, reads as follows:

The goal of MangaHelpers is to provide you with accurate translations for the Manga that you love. In return, all that we ask for is that you show appreciation to those who help you get your "fix". Also, don't forget to help others in return - if you can! – njt

What we see happening on our website currently is an evolution of this statement in a direction that we don’t feel reflects our intentions; we wish to provide (localized) Manga to those who are incapable of obtaining it on their own through legitimate and cost effective ways.

Over the past year, we have seen website traffic originating out of Japan going directly into reading and downloading RAW scans. As a result of Shueisha’s recent public request, and as a result of (us) taking a look at our core values, we have decided that it’s time to go back to the basics that define us.

Therefore, MangaHelpers’ service will undergo the following changes, effective today:

MangaHelpers will no longer be allowing uploads (neither MH hosted, nor externally linked) of RAW scans for the following publishers: Shueisha & Shogakukan. Existing RAW scans that belong to these publishers will no longer be available for any audience, regardless of country.

Visitors residing within the country of Japan will no longer be able to access, read, or download, any RAW or Scanlation releases uploaded to the MangaHelpers database. This second change applies to all Manga publishers in our database.

We understand that this will affect a great deal of MangaHelpers’ visitors and traffic, as some 35% of our readers come from Japan, however; we also understand that availability of Manga within the Japanese isles is not a problem – neither due to price, nor actual physical distribution.

Lastly, we would like to make a point to address Shueisha directly in response to their public request:

We would like to apologize if we have caused the Mangaka that you represent any personal distress. Our intention, as stated above, has always been to spread the word and support of your stories and creative work; not to harm those who are creatively gifted in ways most of us could only dream about.

In closing, we will try our best to work with all publishers on any request you may have in the future in order to best benefit all your global fans; even if that should be a request to remove content from our site.

To all our readers
There are now many people unjustly posting copies of manga on the internet. These unjust copies are inconsistent with mangakas' feelings. They are also distorting the authors' intentions of 'I want the work to be read this way'. The actions of posting these unjust copies on the net, into which the mangakas have poured their hearts, are not only hurting mangakas in real life but are also against the law, even if done in a light-hearted manner. Every time we discover such 'unjust copies', we talk to the mangaka and consider every possible countermeasure. But the number of inconsiderate people is great, and at present we cannot deal with all of them. We have a request for all our readers. The unjust internet copies are deeply hurting the manga culture, mangakas' rights, and even mangakas' souls. Please understand once again that all of that is against the law. Also, the mangakas and Shueisha will severely deal with any unjust copies found on the internet. We ask that our readers please continue to support us.